


No Need For Words

by linndechir



Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, DC Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-14
Updated: 2016-10-14
Packaged: 2018-08-20 06:00:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8238542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/pseuds/linndechir
Summary: There were times when he didn't see Miss Prince for weeks, and where those times had once been accompanied by a dull sense of regret, they now filled him with an entirely age-inappropriate ache of longing, like something was missing in a life that had for so long felt perfectly complete in itself.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [susiecarter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/susiecarter/gifts).



> Dear susie, I adored that you summed up all your Alfred/Diana prompts as "Victorian fluff", so I did my very best to write you Victorian fluff. There's even ankle touching. ;) Hope you enjoy this.

It had been a long time since anyone other than Master Wayne and himself had been down in the Cave. Over a year, to be precise, since the last time Bruce had spoken to his son, back when they had still worked together at least on occasion. Ever since the Cave had become Bruce's alone again, just like it had been before he'd found Dick, before he'd found Jason, before he'd learnt and forgotten again that he didn't have to do this alone.

So the sight of Miss Prince sitting by Master Bruce's side in front of the computer screens had been more than a small surprise, though far from an unwelcome one. She'd smiled at Alfred as if she already knew who he was, but then he knew of her as well. What had impressed him most, though, whenever Bruce spoke of her, weren't her superhuman strength or her skill with a sword nor even the fact that she was far, far older than she looked, no, the most unbelievable thing of it all was that Master Bruce seemed not only to respect her, but to like her. To trust her even, enough to invite her into this sanctum of his.

One visit became another became a third, Miss Prince and Bruce falling into an easy partnership as if Bruce hadn't spent the last eighteen months isolating himself from the world, from his own family even. She nodded at Alfred whenever he joined them, smiled every time he teased Bruce. It should have felt odd, jarring, to have a real life amazon sitting below their home, sipping his tea, dressed in jeans and a leather jacket, and yet he got used to her as quickly as Master Bruce had, to her quiet, calm presence that seemed to soothe Bruce even as the guilt gnawed at him, the shame and the grief for a man he had barely known.

He'd only had the briefest moment of concern that Bruce would ruin this the way he ruined things with every beautiful, intelligent woman who came into his life – but whether he trusted Bruce to be sensible with her or not, he quickly realised that Miss Prince would most definitely not be taken in by Bruce's charisma or his voice or his hands, and he found that he even trusted her not to break his heart if Bruce didn't manage to be sensible around her.

* 

The first time he saw _Wonder Woman_ in person, not on the screens in the Cave, he barely had eyes for her. She didn't have to carry Bruce – and he'd seen her in action often enough to know that she could have – but he leant heavily on her shoulder when they both stepped out of the Car, and from Bruce that was as much of an admittance that he wasn't _fine_ as anyone could ever get.

And yet he didn't insist on sending her away when Alfred started to patch him up – a nasty, deep cut in his thigh that explained the limp. She assisted Alfred quietly, her movements as certain here as they were on the battlefield, calm and unassuming, as if she wasn't a princess, wasn't a goddess, just a soldier helping an injured comrade. It had been a long time since Bruce had had that, too, a comrade, a partner, someone he allowed to share the burden on his shoulders.

She was still there later, when Bruce had fallen asleep, standing there like she wasn't entirely sure whether she was still needed. She looked tired.

“You've done that before,” Alfred said, omitting the “Miss Prince” he usually would have added. She wasn't a _miss_ , not like this, in armour, with sweat on her brow and her sword sheathed on her back.

“I've seen my share of wars,” she replied. Human wars, mortal wars, the kind that left men like Bruce injured, often far worse than he had been that night. She didn't need to say it. Alfred saw it in her eyes – the pain of loss, the quiet guilt, that never-ending question if one couldn't have done more to save those who hadn't come home. He'd seen it in the mirror often enough.

So he offered her a cup of tea because he didn't want her to go out alone into the darkness, and because there wasn't much that could be said at times like this. No use talking about battles that were long over, no use talking about those who weren't there to tell their stories themselves. 

She accepted it with a quick flash of a smile, like she always did, but there was more than only politeness to that smile. She stayed until the morning hours, incongruous in the lake house's modern kitchen with the porcelain cup in her hand, their silence companionable.

*

“Puccini? I wasn't aware you liked the opera, Miss Prince.”

They were standing on the quay, looking out over the lake, and somehow she looked no less regal in jeans and a turtleneck than she had in her armour two weeks before. Master Bruce wasn't back yet from a meeting at Wayne Enterprises, but Alfred had of course not pointed out that Miss Prince had arrived much too early. She hardly seemed to mind waiting, though, standing there in the rare rays of afternoon sun that fell through the clouds, casually chatting about the opera tickets she'd bought as if they weren't standing on top of a cave full of gadgets and vigilante costumes.

“I like Puccini.” She smiled; her dark lipstick should have looked overly dramatic, but on her it looked just right – she wore it the way Master Bruce wore his bespoke suits, as if she'd been born like this.

“I do hope you weren't planning on asking Master Wayne to come with you. I don't think he's managed to sit through a complete opera performance in his entire life. For someone with his patience he occasionally shows a remarkable inability to sit still.”

“Boys,” she laughed, and then continued without missing a beat, like she'd just been waiting for an opening, “But I did hope you might like the opera.”

Spending over forty years around Master Bruce's tendencies to be entirely impossible had made Alfred all but immune to surprises, but he found himself taken aback now. He never doubted her sincerity, and they had developed a sort of understanding, but her connection had never been to him, only to Master Bruce.

“Are you saying I need to get out of the house more often?” he asked after a moment of hopefully not too dumbfounded staring. She laughed again, bright like summer rain, an almost youthful mischievousness in her eyes.

So he told Master Bruce that he'd be taking the night off on Thursday, picked Miss Prince up at the hotel she was still staying at, and saw a marvellous rendition of _Tosca_ at the Gotham Opera House. He couldn't remember the last time he'd taken an evening off to do something he enjoyed, and he most certainly couldn't remember the last time he'd done it in company. 

Miss Prince seemed almost reverent throughout the opera, radiant and animated when they found their way to a quiet bar afterwards, her intricate earrings gleaming in the low light, her hand brushing over his forearm when she spoke. Talking to her was like talking to an old friend, warm and familiar and strong like the whiskey on his lips.

*

It was the theatre next time, the opening of an art gala after that, a new restaurant she'd wanted to try yet another week later. Part of Alfred couldn't help but be surprised every time she asked, and yet he supposed it made sense. She didn't seem to know many people, and for all that Master Bruce was a remarkable man, he wasn't exactly good company most of the time, while Alfred seemed to share more than a few of Miss Prince's interests.

Master Bruce picked up on it, of course. At first he just raised an eyebrow when Alfred took yet another night off – more in one month than he probably had in the past five years – but soon he switched to meaningful smirks and downright dirty looks.

“Oh, it's nothing like that, Master Wayne, grow up.” He shook his head. “I know the idea seems quite novel to you, but some of us are capable of _talking_ to women.”

“If you say so, Alfred,” Master Bruce said, but he was actually smiling, and that was more than enough for Alfred. He'd been smiling more since Superman had returned from the grave, like his own personal ray of hope had come back to see what he'd been up to – not that he ever smiled where Superman could see him. 

* 

Of course it was nothing like that. The idea wouldn't even have occurred to Alfred if not for Bruce's ridiculous implications, and he suddenly found himself noticing the way people looked at them every once in a while when they went out together. He hadn't wasted a thought on it before, that Miss Prince looked young enough to be his daughter when the wisdom in her eyes exceeded centuries, that she was too beautiful in the eyes of the world to waste her evenings on the arm of a man his age.

She danced as sure-footedly as she fought, moved as gracefully in heels as she did in boots, and for all that she could have broken every bone in his body, her touch was light as a feather on his shoulder. He could still feel the strength in her fingers as she cupped his chin without missing a step, her dark eyes on the same level as his.

“You should pay them no heed,” she said. “They don't know us.”

Not for the first time he wondered if years away from the world with nobody but Master Bruce as company had made him that transparent, or if it was only her who could see through him so easily.

“I couldn't care less what they think of me,” and it was the truth, he thought with the spice of her perfume in his nostrils, the curve of her waist under his hand. “But they shouldn't disrespect you.”

“If they think a man like you has nothing more to give than money, it says more about them than it ever could about us.” Her fingertips ghosted over his cheek, brushing over wrinkles she didn't seem to notice, before they returned to his shoulder.

*

He'd made a habit of picking her up, waiting down in the hotel lobby until she came down, but one night she texted him that she was running late and that he should please come up so he wouldn't have to wait downstairs for too long.

“I'm early,” he said by way of greeting when she opened the door. She shook her head and gently pulled him inside. 

“No, it's me, I … dawdled,” she said and winked at him, as if she'd ever _dawdled_ in her life. She was almost ready, wearing a flowing indigo dress that left her strong shoulders bare, her hair done up with exquisite care. “If you could give me a hand?”

She handed him a beautiful necklace, a pearl choker studded with amethysts, before she turned around, bowing her head so he almost missed her quick smile in the mirror she was facing. For a moment he merely looked at the graceful line of her neck, the dark fuzz just below her hairline, the slope of her shoulders. Her skin was like silk under his fingertips when he put the necklace around her neck, adjusting it carefully before he focused on the intricate clasp. He lingered for another moment after closing it, watched her in the mirror, the white gleam of the pearls against her skin, her eyes meeting his. He ran his thumb over the soft skin on her neck just above the choker, a touch like a pre-emptive apology, but she cocked her head to the side as if to welcome it.

It only lasted for a heartbeat before he stepped away and merely offered her his arm like he always did, but her touch prickled on his arm and her closeness was as heady as the last glass of red wine in a long evening.

It was nothing like that, and yet he'd wanted to kiss her neck more than he could remember wanting anything in years.

* 

“Does Bruce know you borrowed one of his cars?” she asked the next time they stepped out of the hotel and and Alfred led the way to a sleek silver Lamborghini.

“Technically I always borrow one of Master Wayne's cars,” Alfred said as he opened the driver's door for her. She took his hand gracefully, although even in her heels on the wet pavement she did not need his support in the slightest, but he was starting to believe that it was much as much politeness on her part as an excuse to touch.

“Not _Bruce Wayne's_ cars,” she said pointedly when he joined her in the car.

“As long as I keep my fingers off his Aston Martin, I doubt he'll complain. And he's far too busy having pointless arguments with Mr Kent to notice anyway.” 

He handed her the keys, watched the way her face lit up with excitement – she loved fast cars as much as Master Bruce did, maybe even more, loved them with a wildness in her eyes that could almost make him forget the centuries of wisdom behind them. She slipped out of her heels and handed them to him with a wink and a “hold those, please”, before she let the engine roar underneath them.

They didn't make it back to Gotham in time for the play they'd been planning to see, but spent the next two hours speeding over tree-lined alleys under the night sky before they stopped for oysters by the harbour.

He wanted to hand her her shoes, but before he could she'd turned towards him, and he found himself with her right foot perched lightly on his thigh.

“Oh,” he said in what was clearly his most eloquent moment of the night. 

She never took his eyes off him while he put the shoe on her foot, fingers moving carefully so as not to tickle her, curling lightly around her ankle when he fastened the clasp. She didn't move at first, stayed there for a second that turned into ten, before she replaced the foot on his thigh with the other one, just an inch or two higher up on his leg. This time his hand lingered even longer on her ankle when he was done, his thumb retracing a dark blue vein. Her dress had slipped up just far enough to reveal her calf, her muscles like steel under smooth skin when he let his hand slide up a bit further, his touch fleetingly light. She closed her eyes for the briefest moment, her lips parting like the whisper of an invitation.

It occurred to him how old his hand looked on her leg, the lines and age spots a stark contrast to her flawless skin, but when he faltered, she covered his hand with her own, and he remembered how little it mattered.

*

After that every touch of her hands made his skin tingle, when she took his hand at the theatre, fingers curled around his in the lightest touch, when she took care to brush over his hand whenever he handed her a cup of tea, when she asked him for help with a necklace, her earrings, the zipper of her dress, even though they both knew she was more than capable of taking care of those things on her own.

Master Bruce had stopped smirking about Alfred's nights off and instead taken to giving him thoughtful looks, but fortunately he had the decency not to say anything, considering that his own ideas of courting seemed to consist in aggressive accusations of recklessness and martyrdom and the occasional sparring fight. Alfred had thought it best not to comment on that either.

There were times when he didn't see Miss Prince for weeks, and where those times had once been accompanied by a dull sense of regret, they now filled him with an entirely age-inappropriate ache of longing, like something was missing in a life that had for so long felt perfectly complete in itself. Whenever she returned – from her home or from a mission – her smile was as calm as it always was, but her eyes lit up with a joy that mirrored his own, her hand squeezed his harder than usual when she took it, and after a while she even took to leaning in and kissing his cheek, just for a second the first time, lingering more after that.

Once her lips found the corner of his mouth rather than his cheek, and he was tempted to turn his head just so until his lips met hers, to kiss her the way he hadn't kissed anyone in so long – but then kissing her wouldn't be like any other kiss he'd shared in his long life, and he was enjoying the wait far too much to end it already.

*

“Do you think Bruce will ever get around to telling Clark that he was the one who inspired all this?” she asked him one evening in the Cave. Master Bruce had gone out on patrol after some planning with her, Alfred had been working on an upgrade for the cowl, and Miss Prince had decided to stay after Bruce had left, as if there was nothing to it. These days there wasn't.

“I have learnt never to expect emotional maturity from Master Wayne,” Alfred replied, unkindly maybe, but he knew it would make her laugh, much like his irreverence actually cheered Master Bruce himself up. “I'd be surprised if he ever managed to tell Mr Kent that he's grown fond of him at all.”

“There isn't always a need for words,” she said and got up, joined him over by the workbench. Something in her voice made him stop and put down the cowl, just in time for her to entangle her fingers with his. “They'll find their way of understanding each other, sooner or later.”

Just like they had, he thought, with fewer words and more shared smiles, with brief touches and long evenings spent together, and he'd never had to ask her if any of it meant what he wanted it to mean, he'd known.

She let him raise her hand to his lips, watched him bow his head slightly to kiss her knuckles. They'd be bruised, if she had been human, from a fight two nights ago, but he didn't need to see blood and scratches to feel the strength in them, didn't need to see scars like the ones he had on his own skin to understand her. His lips passed from one knuckle to the next, the second kiss firmer than the first, and he didn't miss the sharp breath she drew in.

She stepped around the workbench to come closer then, her free hand cupping his chin, her eyes dark and promising and warm. She wasn't wearing perfume, only smelt of herself an the light leather scent of her jacket, and he thought she might kiss him then, when her nose brushed against his, once and then again, her fingers twitching ever so lightly in his hand.

Their eyes met and she gave him an almost giddy, teasing smile before she stepped just out of his reach.

“Good night, Alfred,” she said with a wink, the quiet tone not quite hiding a hint of breathlessness.

“Miss Prince.”

He shouldn't have been surprised that he wasn't the only one enjoying the wait.

*

Master Bruce's care to hide his identity had always ensured that Alfred himself had rarely been endangered by the Bat's night-time activities, but every once in a while someone did follow the right sewers and tunnels to find himself near a certain cave tract and at the end of Alfred's shotgun, though this was most certainly the first time that Alfred had shot something that did not come from this world.

It turned out that whatever sort of aliens the League was fighting this time around could be shot just as easily as anything else in the world, so Alfred didn't see any particular reason to worry. Of course Master Bruce didn't quite see it that way when Alfred informed him of the security breach over the communicators; he tended to fret, not that he'd ever put it that way.

As it turned out, so did Miss Prince.

She arrived shortly after the fighting was done, her hair wild, her armour and her skin covered in soot and alien blood, her eyes filled with a righteous anger he'd never seen in them before. She didn't usually get angry when she fought, always a calm counterpoint to Bruce's barely constrained rage, but now a muscle in her jaw twitched when she stepped over the fallen bodies on the floor.

Alfred had raised the shotgun as a precaution when he'd heard someone arrive, and she moved so fast that he didn't get around to lowering it again before she reached him, her sword hand pushing the barrel aside as if the metal wasn't hot enough to sear skin. Her left hand went for his tie and pulled him close, a forceful gesture that brooked no resistance, but her touch was much softer when she pressed her forehead against his.

“Alfred,” she said as if she wanted to add more, but her voice failed her for a moment. She swallowed before she added, “I was worried.”

“There was no need,” he said. “You'd think I wouldn't need my old shotgun out anymore with all these superpowers around, but that doesn't mean I've forgotten how to use it.”

Her laugh was tense, a frightened kind of relief, and he realised only then how fragile he must seem to her, how mortal. He'd never thought of himself as vulnerable, not even as age had made him slower and weaker, but then before her and Mr Kent he'd never known anyone who could shrug off bullets and hot steel.

Her hand had moved to his neck, the other one to his side, and her fingers pressed into his skin like she had to make sure he was still truly there. He knew the feeling, he'd clung to Bruce that way far more times than he ever cared to count. 

“Diana,” he said quietly, her name a soft novelty on his lips, and yet familiar like he'd whispered it a thousand times already. His thumb rubbed at a bit of dust on her cheekbone, and then her lips were on his. There was no hesitation in that kiss, no teasing and no holding back, a kiss like a thunderstorm that swept him up, like a torrent breaking loose over a cracking dam. She kissed like she fought, pouring her soul into it, like nothing in the world could matter more than what she was doing now.

He'd been right. It was nothing like any other kiss he'd ever shared before.


End file.
